Cloud adoption is one of the key technological trends seen across companies across the globe. According to a market research report, the global cloud computing market is expected to jump to $947.3 billion by 2026 compared to $445.3 billion in 2021.
The rising inclusion of cloud technologies has brought forth new security challenges. As a result, CSPM solutions emerged as the new security category that helps companies configure, monitor, enforce compliance and improve performance and security.
What is CSPM?
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is a solution that aims to improve cloud security by providing a more visible and centralized control over the IT infrastructure. In traditional on-premise scenarios, gaining a comprehensive view of the system and catching vulnerabilities can become highly challenging.
Comparatively, CSPM tools help identify cloud misconfigurations, reduce vulnerabilities, and enforce environment-wide compliance with continuous monitoring.
In case of issues or threats identified, alerts will be generated and sent to relevant teams. For example, you could be alerted in case of no encryption enabled for sensitive data moving between clouds, misconfigured storage buckets, privileged accounts, or no logging enabled between clouds.
You could have automatic or manual remediation capabilities in place to restore the system into a state of compliance. The solution aids the administrative and security teams in optimally performing their responsibilities.
Things to Look for in a CSPM Solutions Provider
Compatibility with Existing Infrastructure
When it comes to CSPM solutions, choosing the right provider is vital. It is also important to look for a CSPM solution that is fully compatible with your existing security infrastructure.
According to Gartner, vendor consolidation is one of the top eight risks corporate leaders have to deal with. However, consolidation could take years depending on the infrastructure, complexity, and security tools available. Thus, you should pick an offering that is closest to your requirement.
Configuration Management across Multi-Cloud Environment
A single cloud environment has thousands of configurations that need your attention. However, when your business has a multi-cloud environment, these configurations can exponentially increase complexity. A few mistakes in these configurations could end up jeopardizing the security of the whole environment.
Hackers could exploit these vulnerabilities to gain entry into your system. In addition, inconsistent logging and audit processes create blind spots that make it difficult to govern the system effectively. Look for a solutions provider that will offer you better visibility over the environment.
Compliance Enforcement
Regardless of your industry, every business needs to comply with security standards. These standards could result from formal regulations, rules, laws, or internal security protocols. Look for a CSPM provider with built-in frameworks for these common industries and regulation-specific standards. You should also have the ability to create new frameworks that are tailored to your organization’s unique requirements.
The advantage of such built-in frameworks is that you can apply a consistent level of security across your cloud environment. Monitoring and remediation tasks become easier to enact.
Governance with Drift Detection
Creating governance frameworks is one part of combating cybersecurity challenges; maintenance is the other part you should pay attention to. With evolving cloud technologies and remote work practices becoming the norm, cyber threats are growing in numbers and sophistication.
Your DevOps, security, and audit teams need to make sure the governance framework and controls put in to track its adherence are up to date. In case of any deviations, concerned groups should be immediately alerted. Automated or manual corrective action can follow according to the set security policy.
Ensure you select a CSPM provider that offers you the flexibility of creating your security policies, possesses drift detection capabilities, can perform remediation tasks automatically, or would require minimal manual intervention.
Reporting Capabilities
Most CSPM solutions in the marketplace will offer a cohesive view of your cloud environment. It should let you see how the system is configured, how the individual entities interact, and how the system is performing, among others.
You can leverage these reporting capabilities to understand what is going on in your organization’s cloud environment and what you could do better. You can also use this data to make critical business decisions.
Simple cloud misconfiguration mistakes could compromise client data and leave your company’s cloud environment in a vulnerable state. Setting up user accounts with high access privileges when not necessary, misconfigured virtualized network functions, unsecured network paths are also examples of cloud issues one may encounter.
CSPM solutions aim to combat these issues by providing better visibility, continuous monitoring, compliance enforcement, drift detection, and remediation capabilities. In addition, they help facilitate smooth communication between your DevOps, security, and audit teams and offer improved performance.
